F Paul Wilson - Novel 10

by Midnight Mass (v2. 1)

  Carole knew how Bern felt. Who had said religion was an opiate of the people? Marx? Whoever it was, he hadn't been completely wrong. For Carole, sitting in the cool, peaceful quiet beneath St. Anthony's gothic arches, praying, meditating, and feeling the presence of the Lord were like a daily dose of an addictive drug. A dose she and Bern had been denied today. Bern's withdrawal pangs seemed worse than Carole's.

  The younger nun paused as she passed the window, then pointed down to the street.

  "And now who in God's name would they be?"

  Carole rose and stepped to Bernadette's side. Passing on the street below was a cavalcade of shiny new cars—Mercedes Benzes, BMW's, Jaguars, Lin-colns, Cadillacs—all with New York plates, all cruising from the direction of the Parkway.

  The sight of them in the dusk tightened a knot in Carole's stomach. The lupine faces she spied through the windows looked brutish, and the way they drove their gleaming luxury cars down the center line ... as if they owned the road.

  A Cadillac convertible with its top down passed below; four scruffy occupants lounged on the seats. The driver wore a cowboy hat, a woman in leather sat next to him. Both were drinking beer. When Carol saw the driver glance up and look their way, she tugged on Bern's sleeve.

  "Stand back! Don't let them see you!"

  "Why not? Who are they?"

  "I'm not sure, but I've heard of bands of men who do the vampires' dirty work during the daytime, who've traded their souls for the promise of immortality later on, and for ... other things now."

  "Sure and you're joking, Carole!"

  Carole shook her head. "I wish I were."

  "Oh, dear God, and now the sun's down." She turned frightened blue eyes toward Carole. "Do you think maybe we should . . . ?"

  "Lock up? Most certainly. I know what His Holiness said about there not being any such things as vampires, but maybe he's changed his mind since then and just can't get word to us."

  "Sure and you're probably right. You close these and I'll check down the hall." She hurried out, her voice trailing behind her. "Oh, I do wish Father Palmeri hadn't locked the church. I'd dearly love to say a few prayers there.

  Sister Carole glanced out the window again. The fancy new cars were gone, but rumbling in their wake was a convoy of trucks—big, eighteen-wheel semis, lumbering down the center line. What were they for? What did they carry? What were they delivering to town?

  Suddenly a dog began to bark, and then another, and more and more until it seemed as if every dog in town was giving voice.

  To fight the unease rising like a flood tide within her, Sister Carole concentrated on the simple manual tasks of closing and locking her window and drawing the curtains.

  But the dread remained, a sick, cold certainty that the world was falling into darkness, that the creeping hem of shadow had reached her corner of the globe, and that without some miracle, without some direct intervention by a wrathful God, the coming night hours would wreak an irrevocable change on her life.

  She began to pray for that miracle.

  * * *

  Carole and Bernadette had decided to leave the convent of St. Anthony's dark tonight.

  And they decided to spend the night together in Carole's room. They dragged in Bernadette's mattress, locked the door, and doubled-draped the window with the bedspread. They lit the room with a single candle and prayed together.

  Yet the music of the night filtered through the walls and the doors and the drapes, the muted moan of sirens singing antiphon to their hymns, the muffled pops of gunfire punctuating their psalms, reaching a crescendo shortly after midnight, then tapering off to ... silence.

  Carole could see that Bernadette was having an especially rough time of it. he cringed with every siren wail, jumped at every shot. Carole shared Bern's terror, but she buried it, hid it deep within for her friend's sake. After all, Carole was older, and she knew she was made of sterner stuff. Bernadette was an innocent, too sensitive even for yesterday's world, the world before the undead. How would she survive in the world as it would be after tonight? She'd need help. Carole would provide as much as she could.

  But for all the imagined horrors conjured by the night noises, the silence was worse. No human wails of pain and horror had penetrated their sanctum, but imagined cries of human suffering echoed through their minds in the ensuing stillness.

  "Dear God, what's happening out there?" Bernadette said after they'd finished reading aloud the Twenty-third Psalm.

  She huddled on her mattress, a blanket thrown over her shoulders. The candle's flame reflected in her frightened eyes and cast her shadow, high, hunched, and wavering, on the wall behind her.

  Carole sat cross-legged on her bed. She leaned back against the wall and fought to keep her eyes open. Exhaustion was a weight on her shoulders, a cloud over her brain, but she knew sleep was out of the question. Not now, not tonight, not until the sun was up. And maybe not even then.

  "Easy, Bern—" Carole began, then stopped.

  From below, on the first floor of the convent, a faint thumping noise.

  "What's that?" Bernadette said, voice hushed, eyes wide.

  "I don't know."

  Carole grabbed her robe and stepped out into the hall for a better listen.

  "Don't you be leaving me alone, now!" Bernadette said, running after her with the blanket still wrapped around her shoulders.

  "Hush," Carole said. "Listen. It's the front door. Someone's knocking. I'm going down to see."

  She hurried down the wide, oak-railed stairway to the front foyer. The knocking was louder here, but still sounded weak. Carole put her eye to the peephole, peered through the sidelights, but saw no one.

  But the knocking, weaker still, continued.

  "Wh-who's there?" she said, her words cracking with fear.

  "Sister Carole," came a faint voice through the door. "It's me ... Rosita. I'm hurt."

  Instinctively, Carole reached for the handle, but Bernadette grabbed her arm.

  "Wait! It could be a trick!"

  She's right, Carole thought. Then she glanced down and saw blood leaking across the threshold from the other side.

  She gasped and pointed at the crimson puddle. "That's no trick."

  She unlocked the door and pulled it open. Rosita huddled on the welcome mat in a pool of blood.

  "Dear sweet Jesus!" Carole cried. "Help me, Bern!"

  "What if she's a vampire?" Bernadette said, standing frozen. "They can't cross the threshold unless you ask them in."

  "Stop that silliness! She's hurt!"

  Bernadette's good heart won out over her fear. She threw off the blanket, revealing a faded blue, ankle-length flannel nightgown that swirled just above the floppy slippers she wore. Together they dragged Rosita inside. Bernadette closed and relocked the door immediately.

  "Call 9-1-1!" Carole told her.

  Bernadette hurried down the hall to the phone.

  Rosita lay moaning on her side on the foyer tiles, clutching her bleeding abdomen. Carole saw a piece of metal, coated with rust and blood, protruding from the area of her navel. From the faint fecal smell of the gore Carole guessed that her intestines had been pierced.

  "Oh, you poor child!" Carole knelt beside her and cradled her head in her lap. She arranged Bernadette's blanket over Rosita's trembling body. "Who did this to you?"

  "Accident," Rosita gasped. Real tears had run her black eye makeup over her tattooed tears. "I was running ... fell."

  "Running from what?"

  "From them. God ... terrible. We searched for them, Carmilla's Lords of the Night. Just after sundown we found one. Looked just like we always knew he would ... you know, tall and regal and graceful and seductive and cool. Standing by one of those big trailers that came through town. My friends approached him but I sorta stayed back. Wasn't too sure I was really into having my blood sucked. But Carmilla goes right up to him, pulling off her top and baring her throat, offering herself to him."

  Rosita coughed and groaned as a spas
m of pain shook her.

  "Don't talk," Carole said. "Save your strength."

  No," she said in a weaker voice when it eased. "You got to know. This Lord guy just smiles at Carmilla, then he signals his helpers who pull open the back doors of the trailer." Rosita sobbed. "Horrible! Truck's filled with these ... things'. Look human but they're dirty and naked and act like beasts.

  They like pour out the truck and right off a bunch of them jump Carmiila.

  They start biting and ripping at her throat. I see her go down and hear her screaming and I start backing up. My other friends try to run but they're pulled down too. And then I see one of the things hold up Carmilla's head and hear the Lord guy say, 'That's right, children. Take their heads. Always take their heads. There are enough of us now.' And that's when I turned and ran. I was running through a vacant lot when I fell on ... this."

  Bernadette rushed back into the foyer. Her face was drawn with fear. "911 doesn't answer! I can't raise anyone!"

  "They're all over town." Rosita said after another spasm of coughing. Carole could barely hear her. She touched her throat—so cold. "They've been setting fires and attacking the cops and firemen when they arrive. Their human helpers break into houses and drive the people outside where they're attacked. And after the things drain the blood, they rip the heads off."

  "Dear God, why?" Bernadette said, crouching beside Carole.

  "My guess ... don't want any more undead. Maybe only so much blood to go around and—"

  She moaned with another spasm, then lay still. Carole patted her cheeks and called her name, but Rosita Hernandez's dull, staring eyes told it all.

  "Is she ... ?" Bernadette said.

  Carole nodded as tears filled her eyes. You poor misguided child, she thought, closing Rosita's eyelids.

  "She's died in sin," Bernadette said. "She needs anointing immediately! I'll get Father."

  "No, Bern," Carole said. "Father Palmeri won't come."

  "Of course he will. He's a priest and this poor lost soul needs him."

  "Trust me. He won't leave that church basement for anything."

  "But he must!" she said almost childishly, her voice rising. "He's a priest."

  "Just be calm, Bernadette, and we'll pray for her ourselves."

  "We can't do what a priest can do," she said, springing to her feet. "It's not the same."

  "Where are you going?"

  "To ... to get a robe. It's cold."

  My poor, dear, frightened Bernadette, Carole thought as she watched her scurry up the steps. I know exactly how you feel.

  "Bring my prayer book back with you," she called after her.

  Carole pulled the blanket over Rosita's face and gently lowered her head to the floor.

  She waited for Bernadette to return ... and waited. What was taking her so long? She called her name but got no answer.

  Uneasy, Carole returned to the second floor. The hallway was empty and dark except for a pale shaft of moonlight slanting through the window at its far end. Carole hurried to Bern's room. The door was closed. She knocked.

  "Bern? Bern, are you in there?"

  Silence.

  Carole opened the door and peered inside. More moonlight, more emptiness.

  Where could—?

  Down on the first floor, almost directly under Carole's feet, the convent's back door slammed. How could that be? Carole had locked it herself—dead-bolted it at sunset.

  Unless Bernadette had gone down the back stairs and ...

  She darted to the window and stared down at the grassy area between the convent and the church. The high, bright moon had made a black-and-white photo of the world outside, bleaching the lawn below with its stark glow, etching deep ebony wells around the shrubs and foundation plantings. It glared from St. Anthony's slate roof, stretching a long wedge of night behind its Gothic spire.

  And scurrying across the lawn toward the church was a slim figure wrapped in a long raincoat, the moon picking out the white band of her wimple, its black veil a fluttering shadow along her neck and upper back— Bernadette was too old-country to approach the church with her head uncovered.

  "Oh, Bern," Carole whispered, pressing her face against the glass. "Bern, don't!"

  She watched as Bernadette ran up to St. Anthony's side entrance and began clanking the heavy brass knocker against the thick oak door. Her high, clear voice filtered faintly through the window glass.

  "Father! Father Palmeri! Please open up! There's a dead girl in the convent who needs anointing!"

  She kept banging, kept calling, but the door never opened. Carole thought she saw Father Palmeri's pale face float into view to Bern's right through the glass of one of the church's few unstained windows. It hovered there for a few seconds, then disappeared.

  But the door remained closed.

  That didn't seem to faze Bern. She only increased the force of her blows with the knocker, and raised her voice even higher until it echoed off the stone walls and reverberated through the night.

  Carole's heart went out to her. She shared Bern's need, if not her desperation.

  Why doesn't Father Palmeri at least let her in? she thought. The poor thing's making enough racket to wake the dead.

  Sudden terror tightened along the back of Carole's neck .... wake the dead...

  Bern was too loud. She thought only of attracting the attention of Father Palmeri, but what if she attracted ... others?

  Even as the thought crawled across her mind, Carole saw a dark, rangy figure creep onto the lawn from the street side, slinking from shadow to shadow, closing in on her unsuspecting friend.

  "Oh, dear God!" she cried, and fumbled with the window lock. She twisted it open and yanked up the sash.

  Carole screamed into the night. "Bernadette! Behind you! There's someone coming! Get back here now, Bernadette! NOW!"

  Bernadette turned and looked up toward Carole, then stared around her. The approaching figure had dissolved into the shadows at the sound of the shouted warnings. But Bernadette must have sensed something in Carole's voice, for she started back toward the convent.

  She didn't get far—ten paces, maybe—before the shadowy form caught up to her.

  "NO!" Carole screamed as she saw it leap upon her friend.

  She stood frozen at the window, her fingers clawing the molding on each side as Bernadette's high wail of terror and pain cut the night.

  For the span of an endless, helpless, paralyzed heartbeat, Carole watched the form drag her down to the silver lawn, tear open her raincoat, and fall upon her, watched her arms and legs flail wildly, frantically in the moonlight, and all the while her screams, oh, dear God in Heaven, her screams for help were slim, white-hot nails driven into Carole's ears.

  And then, out of the corner of her eye, Carole saw the pale face appear again at the window of St. Anthony's, watch for a moment, then once more fade into the inner darkness.

  With a low moan of horror, fear, and desperation, Carole pushed herself away from the window and stumbled toward the hall. Someone had to help. Along the way she snatched the foot-long wooden crucifix from Bernadette's wall and clutched it against her chest with both hands. As she picked up speed, graduating from a lurch to a walk to a loping run, she began to scream—not a wail of fear, but a long, seamless ululation of rage.

  Something was killing her friend.

  The rage was good. It shredded the fear and the horror and the loathing that had paralyzed her. It allowed her to move, to keep moving. She embraced the rage.

  Carole hurtled down the stairs and burst onto the moonlit lawn—

  And stopped, disoriented for an instant. She didn't see Bern. Where was she? Where was her attacker?

  And then she saw a patch of writhing shadow on the grass ahead of her near one of the shrubs.

  Bernadette?

  Clutching the crucifix, Carole ran for the spot, and as she neared she realized it was indeed Bernadette, sprawled face down, but not alone. Another shadow sat astride her, hissing like a reptile
, gnashing its teeth, its fingers curved into talons that tugged at Bernadette's head as if trying to tear it off.

  Carole reacted without thinking. Screaming, she launched herself at the creature, ramming the big crucifix against its exposed back. Light flashed and sizzled and thick black smoke shot upward in oily swirls from where cross met flesh. The thing arched its back and howled, writhing beneath the cruciform brand, thrashing wildly as it tried to wriggle out from under the fiery weight.

  But Carole stayed with it, following its slithering crawl on her knees, pressing the flashing cross deeper and deeper into its steaming, boiling flesh, down to the spine, into the vertebrae. Its cries became almost piteous as it weakened, and Carole gagged on the thick black smoke that fumed around her, but her rage would not allow her to slack off. She kept up the pressure, pushed the wooden crucifix deeper and deeper in the creature's back until it penetrated the chest cavity and seared into its heart. Suddenly the thing gagged and shuddered and then was still.

  The flashes faded. The final wisps of smoke trailed away on the breeze.

  Carole abruptly released the shaft of the crucifix as if it had shocked her. She ran back to Bernadette, dropped to her knees beside the still form, and turned her over onto her back.

  "Oh, no!" she screamed when she saw Bernadette's torn throat, her wide, glazed, sightless eyes, and the blood, so much blood smeared all over the front of her.

  Oh no. Oh, dear God, please no! This can't be! This can't be real!

  A sob burst from her. "No, Bern! Nooooo!"

  Somewhere nearby, a dog howled in answer.

  Or was it a dog?

  Carole realized she was defenseless now. She had to get back to the convent. She leaped to her feet and looked around. Nothing moving. A dozen feet away she saw the crucifix still buried in the dead thing.

  She hurried over to retrieve it, but recoiled from touching the creature. She could see now that it was a man—a naked man, or something that very much resembled one. But not quite. Some indefinable quality was missing.

  Was it one of them}

  This must be one of the undead Rosita had warned about. But could this.. . this thing ... be a vampire? It had acted like little more than a rabid dog in human form.